The fact that Roland Busch was able to raise the forecast for Siemens again on Thursday is also due to his predecessor Joe Kaeser. Busch has now been in charge of Siemens' business for three quarters and has also been nominally at the helm of the company since February. And every time he has presented the figures for one of these quarters, he has raised the annual forecast for the Group - including after the third quarter, which ended in June.

Business is booming, with profits tripling to EUR 1.5 billion compared to the same quarter of the previous year, which was impacted by coronavirus and one-off effects, sales increased by almost a quarter to EUR 16.1 billion and incoming orders also rose sharply. "We are growing very strongly because we have the right technologies at the right time," says the CEO. The accelerating pace of digitalization is currently playing into Siemens' hands, as is the recovery of its markets and customers.

Good subsidiary, bad subsidiary - Healthineers and Mobility

And then Busch repeatedly talks about the "focused technology company" Siemens - and this is where his predecessor Kaeser comes into play: he split up the industrial conglomerate and floated the medical technology and energy divisions as Siemens Healthineers and Siemens Energy. They can currently be described as good and bad subsidiaries: Healthineers is shining - thanks in part to the corona tests that are selling well - and has raised its forecast three times; Energy is suffering from problems in wind power, is in the red and has already lowered its outlook twice.

However, thanks to the spin-off, the problems in the former energy division are no longer having a full impact. Although they are having a negative impact on Siemens' results to some extent, and Busch emphasizes: "We were not happy about what happened there", it is no longer directly his problem. He assumes that the bosses of Energy and its wind power subsidiary Siemens Gamesa will get the problems under control, Busch can say on Thursday in a relatively relaxed manner.

Joe Kaeser is still on board as head of Energy's supervisory board. On Thursday, however, he cannot resist praising the split on Twitter. He writes that he is happy that the strategy is paying off and that this will convince even the last skeptics that it was the right decision to build a new Siemens. This conviction has already reached the stock market. Since the Energy spin-off, the remaining Siemens has gained a good 40 percent in value.

Siemens on the upswing

Siemens is also expecting good figures for the current fourth quarter. Accordingly, the Group is raising its expectations for the year as a whole: According to the forecast, which has been raised for the third time, Siemens now aims to earn 6.1 to 6.4 billion euros - previously it was 5.7 to 6.2 billion euros. Sales are also expected to grow even more strongly.

Growth in the past quarter was spread across all business areas and regions. "China was once again a key growth driver - but so were Europe and the United States," says Busch. The Group also benefited from a strong recovery in its key markets, from the automotive industry, mechanical engineering and the electrical industry to infrastructure, data centers and mobility.

However, part of the growth is also due to the fact that customers are currently building up larger inventories for fear of supply chains breaking down. This growth driver could disappear in the coming year, as Busch emphasizes.

In the third quarter, the company "delivered again - with strong and profitable growth in all business areas," says Busch. Siemens Energy is no longer one of them.